


Split

by SilverFliesInBlueSugar



Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Multiple Personalities, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23207683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverFliesInBlueSugar/pseuds/SilverFliesInBlueSugar
Summary: He wasn't one man - he hadn't been one man for a very long time. No, he - THEY - were now three. All in one body.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	Split

When he was 7, Hershel Bronev became two people.

His parents had just been taken. His brother had just been taken.

It felt like everything was collapsing.

The first foster family that took him in was frankly rather horrid. It didn't particularly help matters. In fact, it considerably worsened them.

At first, he could remember everything. 

And then he vanished, and suddenly he couldn't recall a thing anymore. Was it even him? He had startling lapses of amnesia sometimes. Had Targent left some sort of slow-release drug inside of him? Paranoia clung. He felt possessed.

The second family, the _better_ family, were the Sycamores. He was 9, and acutely aware that he wasn't alone anymore. He didn't know who else was there. But his mind felt fragmented, like broken glass.

When it spoke, it said it's name was Hershel Bronev. He didn't know what to say to that. He just knew he wasn't that name anymore. It was his, he knew. But he didn't identify with it. He wasn't _Hershel_ anymore.

So he introduced himself as Desmond Sycamore. And suddenly, he wasn't one person anymore.

He was two.

He found soon enough that he couldn't remember anything. When he changed into the other, he forgot. His 'mother' told him he had cried. He didn't recall. His 'father' told him that he had studied. He didn't remember a single word.

His childhood had been wiped out in mere moments. And now so was his present.

When he tried to remember his first foster family, his mind came up blank. Was he going insane?

Hershel stole his body sometimes. Sometimes he asked, and sometimes he didn't.

He apparently just tended to wander. And cry. Crying was most common.

Sometimes he wrote notes. Usually, it was something about Theodore.

Try as he might, Desmond struggled to even remember his brother's face. And he couldn't help but resent Hershel for stealing those memories.

And yet, at the same time, he had to also be so thankful that he didn't remember his prior home life. He frankly didn't want to know that part. At all.

He studied hard, and grew. He went to a private school, and then a private college, and then an esteemed university. Hershel didn't age with him. Hershel remained around 10 years of age. Stuck in time, even as Desmond became an adult. When Hershel described how he saw himself and his appearance, Desmond found they looked nothing alike anymore.

Entirely different people. In every way.

He met a lovely woman called Maria, and had a lovely daughter called Sara.

He watched the blood stain the wall in slow motion. Both of them screamed.

Something tore again. Further fractures in glass, like picking up pieces only to drop them again, further breaking it.

Making it increasingly harder to put it all back together.

It was visceral. And as his wife clutched onto his child, blood staining the floor as Bronev screamed at his aide for firing too soon, he saw the world come into two before him.

When he sat in bed later that night, facing his own self-inflicted possible death, glass held in two fingers as his butler tried to pry the sharp edge from his shaking hand, wrists bleeding freely, suddenly Desmond wasn't there anymore.

He didn't know how, but Raymond knew. Could tell immediately. And he asked him his name.

The man stared at the butler before him, eyes wide, and said haltingly that he didn't know.

He was later to decide on 'Jean Descole'.

From inside of his own mind, Desmond went to sleep, falling backward. Hershel held his hand, and Descole watched, detatched, as his arm was stitched.

"I'm going to stop them, even if it kills me"

Desmond didn't appreciate being spoken for, hated that the stranger in his body was making his decisions. But he wasn't actually opposed to what he said.

When he came out, he was once again confused. 

Hershel rarely came out, usually only triggered by the words 'Theodore' or 'Brother'. Descole came out fairly often, and in those times there was always something broken. Be it him or his surroundings.

Desmond couldn't find it within himself to admonish his alter when he fronted and found his wrists coated with fresh scars. He understood. 

Descole hated him. Hated everyone in the little internal system.

In Misthallery, Desmond rarely came to the front. For the most part, he found he was only compelled to return when there was academic material that Descole was not well acquainted with enough to work with effectively, or even sometimes half against his own will, when something triggered his memories.

He retained somewhat of what had happened to his family. But he knew that Descole held most of that memory.

Descole manned the attack on the Garden of Healing, and masterminded the plot of Ambrosia. Descole manipulated Randall, and led his actions through Monte D'Or. 

Descole almost seemed like the true him, sometimes.

At Froenborg, it was him. Desmond. Finally. He almost missed fronting. Being in the headspace was difficult. Descole often lashed out at Hershel, and it was hard to stop him when he was practically powerless.

Hershel mumbled that he wanted his brother back. Descole spat that if he saw Layton one more time, he would kill him. Desmond just stood in silence.

Travelling across the world was exhilerating, until it sometimes wasn't. When someone just happened to say the word brother in passing, and he had to rush to co-control when Hershel immediately fronted. Descole could passably act as him. He could passably act as Descole. Hershel could do neither. Sometimes, Descole came out at night, and broke something. Never anything important. Desmond tried communication, to speak to him. To calm him. To reason. Rationalise.

Miraculously, it almost worked.

He wasn't fully there yet. But the damage inflicted settled from wild, deadly gashes to more calm, uncertain lines. Though, even in the relatively high heat of some locations they visited, Desmond wouldn't dare roll up his sleeves. But he didn't mind terribly.

Sometimes, he saw Layton's eyes lock onto his arm, in the split second instances when his sleeve slipped slightly. And he swore that the other man _must_ know.

Yet, Layton never said anything. And so neither did he. There was an air of tension there, a layer of ice both feared to tap lest it break it, and anything behind it.

They flew from Froenborg to Kodh, from there to Mossinia, Torrido, Hoogland, Phong Gi...

He began to lose track. And they found each and every egg.

On one trip, the girl of the ice, _Aurora_ , asked of the concept of family. Apparently, the Azran civilisation had had vastly different takes on familial structure.

Luke had cheerfully mentioned the base stereotypical family unit - the mother, the father, the sister, the _brother._

Hershel fronted almost immediately, with such force that he could already feel the pounding of a headache.

Layton told Aurora his full name, when the conversation shifted, and when Aurora repeated a wonderous 'Hershel?', both said 'Yes?'

It was mortifying. Hershel Bronev rushed from the room. Hershel Layton stared after him.

In Targent's own headquaters, the mere sight of Bronev forced Descole to the front, though Desmond managed to remain co-con, even as Descole ranted that he would make that bastard pay. Bronev, for his part, merely looked smug and amused.

At one part, Aurora had enquired for the scars on his wrists. He had told her they were from archaeological accidents, a slip of the hand, scraping of rock against skin when one loses their balance and has a bad fall, the gravity simmering beneath the Earth's upper surface forcing friction to flay skin from bone. 

She had nodded, and left it. He had self-consciously tugged his sleeve down with his fingers the rest of the day. 

Descole fronted when he touched the key, his excitement and thrill overcoming Desmond's desperation to keep the act going. And he transformed. The mask was firmly back in place, in more ways than one.

When he screamed at Layton, broken and angry, that the Azran was all he had left to even keep existing for, he was simply being honest. Descole was destructive as it were already. Without that driving goal in their life? He would kill himself without pause, and take the other two in the system with him.

It was almost a blur, to continue. It was Hershel who saved the boy, Luke, from the scourging fire of a shattered stone defender. It was Hershel who explained to Layton his true lineage.

It was Desmond that stepped into the blinding lights, and it was all three of them that died apon their little podium, amongst the screams of those they had travelled with.

And as the Azran Legacy crumbled beneath his feet, Desmond bid Layton adeiu before vanishing into the rubble.


End file.
